Transcript 0:00 [on-hold music] Talk to me. Information, news, and entertainment on demand. WUSradio.com. 0:10 [on-hold music] Welcome to The Peggy Smedley Show, the voice of IoT in our connected world, with your host, Peggy Smedley. [on-hold music] Hello, listeners, and welcome back to The Peggy Smedley Show. 0:26 My final guest today is going to be another regular on my show, and I'm really excited because he holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and he has previously edited and reported on tech companies like Dell and IBM, and in his current role, he covers technology and venture capital with, uh, companies with a focus, uh, on Chicago's startup space. 0:51 Please welcome to the show, John Platz, senior reporter for Crain's Chicago Business. John, welcome to the show. Thanks. Glad to be here. So John, you know what? 1:03 W-we have to talk about a smart city here and what's going on, and I know just recently I was looking at some of the articles you have in Crain's, and just recently, I think one of your most recent ones, you just actually wrote an article about a week ago which talks about which neighborhoods are using Uber and Lyft most, which I thought was so pretty timely for today's conversation because we're talking about smart cities, we're talking about, uh, crowded, uh, public transit. 1:32 Y-it can't be more timely on all of this. 1:35 So let's really start with, in your mind, what you consider a smart city because you're a guy that gets it when we talk about Chicago, because we've got crowded problems, you know, and Chicago's trying to be a really smart city. 1:48 So let, let me get your definition of it. 1:52 Well, it, it's using technology to figure out, you know, where the components of the city are, where the, where are the things, and, and where are the people in the city and the things that move. 2:02 And once you know that, you c- you can start to operate and hopefully manage the city, uh, more efficiently. And, and I think that's good because if you think about it, we've got some really great opportunities here. 2:16 I mean, one of the things you've reported on is what Argonne National Labs is trying to do with the University of Chicago and a group of young researchers. 2:26 They're trying to figure out how to manage this overcrowding with public transit and neighborhoods, and there's a lot going on right now. 2:35 So I guess my question to you, when we think about all these things that are going on, what's the biggest challenge we have as a city right now? Is it our public transit kind of situation? 2:47 Is it that we've got a group of millennials now that view differently than our traditional residents? Is it the, is it the confluence of them all? What do you kinda think is going on? 2:59 Because it's one thing to say connect the streetlights, it's, you know, get buses to going at a certain time, or is it really the mindset that we've got a changing generation that thinks differently than the older generation? 3:14 I think there's a combination of things going on. 3:16 See, this intersection of technology coming to the infrastructure of a city, you know, sort of the, the nuts and bolts and the, and the guts of the city, whether that's, you know, CTA and transit, whether that's, you know, uh, sewer, water lines, and streetlights, you know, the physical infrastructure, the bridges and the roads. 3:36 And so now we're starting to apply technology to that, th-which allows you to get smarter a-about how you deliver it. 3:45 Um, you start to, you know, y-y-you start to use big data, you know, and the Internet of things to give you the smart analytics to say, "Let's fix this before it breaks. Let's know when it breaks faster." You know? 4:01 And, and that all requires data. 4:03 So the data's been around, but now you're starting to get opportunities to use it, and that's what Charlie Catlett is doing, for instance, um, at U of C, where they're doing a project called the Array of Things, which they describe as sort of a Fitbit for the city, and it's, you know, it's measuring everything from, um, you know, traffic to air temperature to pollution. 4:24 And if... Once you start to know in real time what's going on, you can start, you can start to deliver services better or differently. 4:34 As it relates to the millennials, you know, that, that's just the sign of sort of how the users of the city are changing their behavior. So, you know, the Uber and Lyft, uh, piece is a, is a really good example of that. 4:47 If you sort of look at where the demand is for that, what you know now instead of... A-and it's intuitive. You know? I mean, who, who are, who are the most likely customers of, of Uber and Lyft? Well, you know, it's a... 4:59 At the end of the day, that's a mobile phone app, so who are the people, you know, that grew up with a smartphone and think that, you know, the, the, the world is, is, is to be explored through, through the phone and through an app? 5:11 Well, it's young people. And so you look at the, the neighborhoods where, um, that, you know, the traffic is heaviest for Uber. Well, it over-indexes, you know, for basically young millennials. 5:23 But the interesting thing is it dovetails with, uh, mass transit. So one of the, one of the things that you find out by looking at the data isn't that it's an either/or proposition. It's both. 5:36 So, you know, the CTA ridership hasn't plummeted. It is interesting, where the biggest impact from Uber and Lyft w-were is on, you know, Friday evenings and Saturday evenings when people are going out. 5:50 So maybe they're using Uber and Lyft instead of a car. There's also some drop off in public transportation because maybe they're not using the L on Saturday night. 5:59 But the interesting thing is that, is Uber and Lyft didn't displace the number of people getting on mass transit every day.Heading to work. 6:07 And we don't have the data yet, but they probably didn't change the commute patterns all that much. 6:12 So that's what you're really starting to see now with smart cities is instead of managing it by gut, you know, what you think or how you've always done things, you start to manage it with data. 6:27 And, and that's an int-interesting point because when you talk to Charlie, you raise a really good point because Charlie likes to talk about using these computational tools to help policymakers make these right investments to be more proactive. 6:41 In fact, your article is really interesting because you noted about where that heavy user is in less affluent areas, I think of the city and these neighborhoods, the south and west side of Chicago, and when that activity was that you just described makes a very interesting point because we react and say, "Oh my gosh, tra-- you know, cabs aren't gonna be used or bus transit's not gonna be used." 7:05 But that's not necessarily true when you think about when they're using their apps, where they're going out versus when activity of normal bus transit kind of being is used, and that's what you're saying. Right. 7:17 I, I think what you're seeing is a shift toward, you know, had the cab c-had the, had the cab companies adopted smartphone, a smartphone app much earlier, Uber wouldn't exist. [laughs] And all... 7:29 And what, what I can see in the data, frankly, is it looks like much more of a shift in the same way that, you know, retail, traditional brick-and-mortar retail gets hurt by Amazon when you have a, have a behavior shift in which people just sort of say, "I know what I want, and I just can click," and you can order it at, you know, midnight in your pajamas, 7:51 then, you know, you shift demand from one place to another. I think, you know, one of the interesting things in the data, and it was by a researcher out in New York of all places, um, who... 8:01 A software engineer sort of looked at, at the data available on cabs and noted that, you know, the, the increase in Uber, uh, almost parallels exactly the decline in traditional cab trips. 8:15 So instead of, you know, standing around waiting for a cab to come, maybe calling a cab, 8:21 when you gave people the ability to, with a, you know, a sw-a couple of swipes on their smartphone, order up a cab exactly where they were when they needed it, 8:30 you know, you j- you just shifted the, the, the demand from one platform to another. I'm not sure you created a lot of new demand. 8:37 And that's, and that's sort of the key to smart cities, is figuring out what's new, what's different, what's additional. 8:44 What we don't know yet, and this is where I think Charlie's going and I think where the city knows it needs to go, which is why UI Labs is, um, is really important, is figuring out in a world in which you get Amazon doing, you know, one-hour or two-hour delivery of groceries and not just, you know, within two days, do you end up with a lot more net net? 9:08 Do you end up with a lot more traffic on your roads, and how do you deal with that? And does it change the amount of traffic and the times at which it's on the road? 9:17 Or is it a shift in which you've just got fewer people in their own personal vehicles running back and forth to Target or Walmart or whatever? You know, is it a shift or is it additive? 9:27 And, and in order to plan, particularly at a time when infrastructure dollars, uh, you know, are declining and in, in very short supply, you know, that's what you need to know. 9:37 [upbeat music] Hey, John, we're out of time. John, thank you for being with us. I look forward to you being on the show on a regular. Hey, listeners, we're out of time. 9:44 Remember, we broadcast live every Tuesday, twelve noon Central. Thanks for listening. As always, this is The Peggy Smedley Show, the podcasting voice of IoT and revel-relevant technology. 9:55 Remember, with great technology comes great responsibility. Take care. 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